YenPress or Qidian International

WTF, this is news to me... RIP WuxiaWorld.

It's official now YenPress and Qidian is the same shit.

 

that i know,the very reason i created this account after lurking around for so long,simply because those mofo's have the guts attacking WW here on the very heart of the community..

if you put it that way,no matter which people choose i agree.

agree

as shitty as it is that's their responsibility as publishing company..protecting the profits and interest of the company..and author (qidian not included)

 

The problem is... Not every author agree, nor said author feel protected.

Why?

Because some authors actually came to WuxiaWorld to promote their products.

 

they commented if i remember correctly saying stuff like they're glad that foreigners actually liked their stories..
ever since this whole matter blew up i'm still wondering if the authors actually realized the legal implication for qidian,you know technically they're the mules of qidian..they write for qidian not for themselves.

simply by commenting or supporting don't you think from qidian's PR pov that's a disaster?..clearly qidian labeled ww as pirates...and their authors actually endorsing pirates LOL!

 

This is the problem with their contracts.

Since I don't know the detail of the contracts I will never able to gather conclusion.

For example, some people write a novel, they still have the rights to claim their ownership of the novel, publishing companies only have the exclusive rights to publish it, that's all.

This means the author still have the basic intellectual rights, meanwhile publishing companies only have the exclusive publishing rights.

 

actually i've seen some user posts not only from the last 2 days but even waaaay back then in reddit a year ago i think,i forgot the exact thread but it was discussion about how to access qidian,that post say that no matter what happened every works from the author will belong to qidian forever along with their future works,even after the contract ended... not much intellectual rights left there for the authors imo....

this is exactly what makes yen press as publisher is better than qidian in this topic of author's rights

 

True, YenPress slightly better since they still honor the intellectual rights and claim of the author (Much like the western copyright laws).

 

@Hell_ping
Thread creator, here i have a bit to say and hope to get it all out right. first and foremost BT i can say with 100% certainty changed my life. before it the anime ending was just the story ending. unless a manga came along, which was never very likely. so i'm very grateful to all who worked and toiled for all our sake's. for all you guy's have done, thank you. i'm grateful, almost more so than i am to the authors oddly enough.
second, i just want to say when the stuff with yen press started, i didn't know very much hell i can not even say up till reading most of the follow up comments i understood very much from my end. i used to f5 the crap out of the FB page for BT for updates, especially for Tokyo Ravens. to me it felt almost out of nowhere, i'd see updates that briefly explained that due to yen press licensing this novel i was following it was being taken down.
haha now to me after awhile, by association the name yen press just left me gnashing my teeth in hatred. thinking "why wont they leave us in peace" or other such juvenile thoughts. ignorant of other things, i continued as such. to me i'm just an average member of the community. so i didn't really see the point in finding out why the sky fell. realizing no one was able to hold it up was enough. i mean, it is not as though knowing the reason could change much. still out of curiosity, after the request hit one of my frav's at sky overlord, i decided to look into it. what i found (again regardless of the reason's) was that projects would be re-translated from the start.
they would no longer be at the same pace of release that i had grown so accustomed to. now in hindsight i realize i was, no am incredibly selfish. after-all i took for granted those days off school and work, that those chapters would be there waiting a click away as a source of reprieve from RL.
so when it was gone... i became volatile, and direct even now some of that hostility towards yen press.i saw that comment about the author's having to make a living as well, and felt like shit the first time i saw it. left me thinking "yeah that's true" after all people can not live by goodwill alone. at the end of the day favorite authors are still just people doing job's for income. reminded me of an Andre 3000 song
where he gripped about the same issue.
still if i could have paid directly to the author i would have. ill buy the random volume here and there but never as much as i should i suppose because it really is just out of appreciation and memorabilia. for me at least.
the comments ive seen have cleared up a lot for me but when making this thread really i was just recalling the early days when BT started dropping novels seeing the comment about you guys having served your purpose i suppose it can be seen that way but at the same time i wonder if you guys realize to many BT was like the brightest light-bulb in a darkroom that suddenly got turned of to most people they were told just go buy it you leeches haha boy did that sting. words rang true i suppose, but did BT really only ever serve to market to the west? part of me still thinks a bunch of people who were dissatisfied with the story ending "incomplete" got together to tell a bunch of other dissatisfied people "look their was more" to hear BT served it's purpose i don't fully believe that. as by now it would have unanimously shut everything down if that were the case not just the things requested. but this is only my rambling at any rate i really just wanted to say my thanks.

 

the two should have been separate matters, that is the same as going to a restaurant paying for a meal, and being told if you don't eat at the restaurant you can't eat the food they serve.

 

Well, yes and no.. Yes in the part that the free exchange of information and ideas is out there and there is a democracy in the market, which is capitalism. It's when you get people saying hey you know what..The evil that stopped it was government power.. Which is inherently against the market.

 

Your metaphor does not suit for this situation at all. For years, WXW has been translating novels from Qidian which has gone far beyond the scope of fair use and now Qidian came. They have the option to send a Cease and Desist letter but they didn't. That's like you have been eating for free for years at a restaurant but the restaurant owner knows that the price is so high that you couldn't effort it, that's why it was lowered. However, the same does not go to Yen Press. They will mercilessly send a Cease and Desist letter, usually contains threats of lawsuit, something that is scary since the amount of money required is usually astronomical.

 

1. What you based on by "gone far beyond the scope of fair use"?
2. Ren already foresee the problem with licensing right so he get 'exclusive authorizations' (for 10 years iirc) on 20 novels.
3. Then QI came. But they can't simply send a Cease and Desist letter. This including the additional 11 without authorization because they have verbal agreement for further authorization. Whether the verbal agreement is valid or not is up for court to decide.
4. QI already mercilessly use the legal threats options on public forum.
5. I can't confirm, and still looking for source, but have read somewhere that there are other translators who refused to join QI already received the legal threats.

 

Generating thousands of dollars from donations and ad revenue. That is no longer in fair use because you're profiting illegally from someone's work.

He went to China and personally met those people to acquire license from Qidian by paying for the license but of course the price was reduced by a lot. Note that, usually in this case, company will not tolerate and just sue them right away for two reasons.

1. They have been translating and making profit without permission, authors' permissions don't count because Qidian has legal rights to the novels.

2. You're unable to pay for the actual price of the licensing

Oh yes they can just simply send C&D letter to anyone who doesn't translate on WXW actually but they didn't. This matter is not only about Qi and WXW.

It wasn't C&D letter , C&D letter contains date that you're required to stop else you'll be sued and it's confirmed to happen if you fail to follow while what Qi made was also a threat but it wasn't a formal one and it is uncertain to happen as of yet.

Threats are a part of their right as the copyright holder. Note that this threat is the only threat that is lawful in order to enforce the copyright and it's every person's right to make such threat when someone uses your work without your permission and making money out of it.

This is far different from other threats that do not abide the law.

 

So 400.000 rmb leaked by noddletown is not actual price of licensing?

 

You are right it does not fall under fair use. It falls under original work.

http://bookwormtranslations.com/copyright-law-and-translation-what-you-need-to-know/

Just a bit of interesting tidbits.

 

....You're thinking about this incorrectly. QI isn't sending cease and desists because of one crucial thing that it wants. The stockpiles of the translators. Yen Press didn't care and thus destroyed the market with their total war. They want the translators to come and join them so that way they get their already translated chapters. After that, QI could care less about these translators. It's an intelligent business decision, to pressure all of the fan translators to give up their rights and thus not have to about re-translating and wrecking havoc in the market. But make no mistake, QI wants to control the entirety of the web novel market and are perfectly fine with being unscrupulous about it.

 

this is the scary part of their plan...

 

That amount is not confirmed and that was the estimation of the reduced amount.

You posted my rebuttals already. Yeah, their work can't enjoy copyright protection due to such requirements at first. Note that Wikipedia article was written with the assumption that the derivative works had the original authors' permission. Also, it's different from country to country. It might say that it retains its own copyright and that article but that does not mean it'll always be the same.

To be honest, I don't care about them monopolizing the entire community. I just want my RtW. Also, they can't monopolize JP and KR so there's that.

 

Looks like we didn't read the same thing because it does say that it can be copyright. If the work is in a public domain. The translated novel can be considered a work on its own because what language one uses can be different from translator to translator and what their mastery of the language is. So, yes he gets copyright protection on the work he has already published. (that's why Qidian tries to buy the rest of the already translated novel chapters when they try to get people on board. Because they know this). Does it protect them from using the original work in the base language? Sure you can send a cease and desist letter.

Note that it was not a Wikipedia article but hey, thanks for not actually reading it.

 

Why can't they? Could they not buy the rights for popular JN and KN webnovels from the various companies that own the rights? They surely have the money to do so. So there really isn't anything stopping them besides language/cultural barriers (which are a pretty big deal I must say) and desire.

Tbh, I read webnovels because they are free, and I dont get as invested with them as I do with published novels and thus don't feel an urge to read them continuously without stop like I do with good western fiction. So a monopoly of the sort that QI would try to create would preclude the hobby. Though I am perfectly fine with simply focusing my efforts more toward english original webnovels novels at the expense of translated ones, if need be